How to Make Nativity Costumes

Nativity costumes are the easiest to make, as they have simple shapes, plain fabrics and virtually no embellishments. Find patterns for simple tunics to represent nativity characters with information from a drama production designer in this free video on costumes.

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Video Transcript

Now, with other things coming up we do get calls a lot for doing Nativities, and they're really great basic shapes. So this is my Mary, this is on blue silk, basic piece right here. And then there's this piece under here and this is the head wrap. And it's just a big square fabric that we drape over her, and we usually use that. When you're doing a Nativity the nice thing is, this is the easiest costume to make. It's just a square tunic and they sell patterns at Buttricks and Vogue and McCalls. Everyone has like a Nativity pattern, and they're really dirt simple to do. And that's the basic shape that everything started out as. And you see the Romans, the Greeks, this; it's all the same period and it's so so simple and basic. This is kind of a suede cloth. And this is something that works nicely for a cape or a good drape. And these are basic things that you're going to use for that. Now you might have soldiers as well and you're going to use a red tunic for your soldiers because that's what the Roman legion wore. So you want a simple red tunic like this, just basic. And I'll show you some armor to put over this too in a second. But it's real simple. You can put some gold trim on the neck if you want to but otherwise keep it real simple. Again, here's some great texture. It's a wonderful, wonderful weave on this. And these are the types of things you want to use to build your textures, like wools, acrylic blends, things like that, that have a nice depth and texture to them. Now we're going to take this down here with us. This is one of the Roman soldiers here. This one is a new piece we just acquired in. This is all leather. and you can see when that's on a hand assembly, you can take the red here and put the red underneath it, and you're going to have that effect to it which is really great. O.k., that's one of the several ideas we have. Others, the purists like this. This is also molded leather. We have some in metal and we do make them in plastic. This is a sculpted breast plate like this. and again when you take this and you put this over this, this gives you your Roman. Now you're going to pair this with a Roman helmet. And that's a fancy one, that's one of the Centurions. And we also have the Roman up here in the gold. That's the feather crest on that. And then we have the silver one up here, sitting next to a black helmet that's actually like from The Three Hundred. And I've got the soldier helmets like these guys. This is metal. And they do make them in plastic. We have the plastic ones too. This is a metal one. Sometimes I think the plastic are easier to deal with because the metal is a little heavy. But that's sort of what these guys are. And currently we actually have a brass one, a beautiful brass one that's out right now. It actually goes with the helmet that's up here. See this is like a three Hundred Leonitus kind of thing as well. And he's new and kind of fun.